Investment in Israel’s red-hot tech sector continues to turn heads. In what is believed to be the largest seed-funding round in Israeli history, Talon Cybersecurity, which makes cybersecurity solutions for the distributed workforce, said it secured $26 million in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Team8, serial entrepreneur Zohar Zisapel and leading cyber angel investors.
The company is developing a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity technology that offers protection from the unique threats emerging in today’s era of distributed work, Talon Cybersecurity said in a press release. The seed funding will allow it to further develop technology and expand its development team, it said.
The announcement comes less than a week after Trax, a computer-vision company transforming brick-and-mortar retail, raised $640m. in a Series E financing round believed to be the largest overall funding round ever for an Israeli company.
Israeli tech companies raised more than $2 billion in March, breaking records set each of the previous three months, and are on track to raise even more in April.
Talon Cybersecurity’s unique technology makes it possible to turn an organization’s security weaknesses into resilience against cyberattacks without compromising an employee’s privacy or productivity, the press release said.
Talon Cybersecurity was founded by two proven entrepreneurs in the cybersecurity industry, CEO Ofer Ben-Noon and CTO Ohad Bobrov, both alumni of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite military technology and intelligence unit.
Ben-Noon founded Argus, a global leader in automotive cybersecurity, which was sold to Continental in 2017 for an estimated $430m. Bobrov founded Lacoon Mobile Security, a provider of security solutions for cellphones, which was sold to Check Point in 2015 for an estimated $100m.
“Talon is solving a major problem created by recent changes in the workforce model,” David Gussarsky, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said in the press release. “The need for one comprehensive solution to enable workforce flexibility, without compromising security, has created a whole new market and a unique opportunity to become a game-changer in the cybersecurity industry.”
Ben-Noon said: “The distributed workforce presents a host of new cybersecurity challenges and exposes both large and small organizations to new types of threats that can’t be solved using existing solutions. This unique challenge and opportunity led Ohad and me to embark on this exciting journey. Talon is entering the market to provide organizations with maximum flexibility, productivity and visibility while protecting them against cyberattacks that are becoming more and more sophisticated.”